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This post is a slightly more refined version of a talk I gave during 2019, called Branding for Disruptive Startups. It's a collection of stuff that’s in my head on a daily basis around what makes a good brand, the intersection of brand and culture, and what you can do as a startup to start creating a brilliant brand without investing a heap of cash. I also cover why branding is harder for startups, disruptive startups in particular.

Before we start, "disruptive startups" is a term we use at Jellypepper to group our clients working in deep tech or just generally cool industries - like Baraja (self-driving car tech), Corellium (mobile device virtualization) or Inventia (3D bioprinting).

The description we tend to use at Jellypepper is that your brand is what your customers think you are. It’s everything — how you act, how you present yourself, how you’re perceived. It's is shaped through their experiences and interaction with your products, services and communications and you influence those thoughts with the messages you communicate, the way you behave and, today more than ever, the experience you deliver. When a brand is consistent, it becomes believable, resulting in engagement, loyalty and success.

Back in 1975, Pepsi started a well known campaign called the Pepsi Challenge, essentially a Pepsi vs Coke blind test where they got a bunch of people to drink both drinks then tell them which one they preferred. Guess what the result was?

Around 61% preferred Pepsi. So Pepsi’s better right? They have a statistically-proven better product.

Unfortunately for them, Coke outsold them at least 2:1, 3:1, 4:1, depending on the market. So what did this challenge prove? Was it that Pepsi’s marketing team sucked, or the results were false?

No, it proved that even though they had a statistically better product, there were a lot of factors that just weren't as good, including their brand.

Coca Cola ran a really successful campaign around 2009 / 2010 called Open Happiness. Ads like these are part of the reason they're dominating the market. Frankly, it’s just sugar water. But they don’t sell sugar water — they sell lifestyle and happiness.

While Pepsi was busy telling people that they could have a better drink, Coke was telling people they could have a better life.

When most people think of a brand, they think of the logo. Fair enough since it’s the most visually identifiable mark for a company. I'm positive if I showed you the logo, you’d be able to tell me the company right away.

But what else is a brand made of? What about colour? Can you tell what company I’m mimicing right now?

Hundreds of companies use these colours, but it’s these specific hex values that make it unique.

It's also the order in which they're shown. Are you able to tell between these two words which one is correctly Google?

If you picked the bottom one, you're a perceptive cookie. You’ve seen this order so many times in their logo that you can recognise when it’s wrong. That's pretty amazing if you think about it.

How about tone of voice? Here's two descriptions of laptops, one of them was written by Apple. Can you tell which?

If you picked the left one, well done. How did you know? I didn’t even note what the product is. I didn’t have a logo and they both used the same font and colours.

Fun Fact: they're both the same laptop - a Macbook Pro.

Branding is comprised of a lot of different things - layouts, imagery, typography, colours, logos, tone of voice, messaging, iconography and patterns. All these things add up and you can recognise a great brand from any one of these. Although, these are mostly visual things - they’re just a gateway, method of delivering your brand.

Real branding is about creating a relationship and being approachable. You want your customer to identify with your story and the problems you’re solving, create that relationship based on values you both share.

Most brand relationships are an illusion, but to be fair if you cant tell the difference between illusion and reality which most people can’t, then it doesn't matter anyway. They’re invested in you, that’s what matters.

But of course, that relationship is much easier if you’re not faking it.

Brands are about stories. I love stories - they're how we understand and make sense of the world around us. The stories you tell can inspire people, educate them, give them hope. This can make them love you, loyal to you. Think about any book or movie that's stuck with you your entire life, given you direction or changed how you think.

Branding is also about culture - they’re two sides of the same coin. The only way your brand is persistently represented throughout your company and beyond is by instilling your company’s values into your team. That’s what will make them your best advocates.

I tend to find the best brands are authentic, honest and simple. 202X is going to a very interesting time - it’s an era of post-truth, politically endorsed fake news and deepfake videos. Being authentic and having your audience believe you is going to mean more than ever. How you decide to adopt to this new trend is going to say a lot about your brand.

A lot of what we do at Jellypepper is branding disruptive startups. Branding can be particularly difficult for these startups as the the lack of precedence and sources of inspiration means there’s nothing to draw off. How do you brand a self-driving car company or a 3D bioprinting company? What’s the right tone to go for? What should it look like? What can we say, or not say?

The flip side of that is whatever you make might just dictate the industry standard and influence whether people reject or adopt the new technology. There are 100 wrong ways to brand a 3D bioprinting company for example, by talking too deep about the technology to regular people (which weirds them out) or designing your website too casual or edgy so customers think you’re flippant.

It's always changing, but there are 3 core issues we generally have to face when branding or rebranding these companies:

The first one is the knowledge gap, where nobody understands what you do. At least when you’re rebranding a bank, a food delivery or a chat app, people get the core concept which means you can focus on what makes you different. With startups, especially the disruptive ones, your difficulty tends to lie in explaining your core concept or product.

The second one is relationships. First impressions really matter here - people don’t know anything about you and it can be hard for them to grasp what you’re about, sp you have to use whatever’s at your disposal. Without press or testimonials, this can be tough. That’s where your story, culture and mission come in, to encourage that personal attachment.

The third is content. Most scrappy startups can get away with using stock photography and reworking their competitors copy. It’s much harder if you’re working in a totally new field - there's not much stock footage available on 3D bioprinting. So when you’re on a tight budget, a little photoshop compositing goes a long way.

So, how can you create a great brand? One of my favourite quotes here is that "it’s not inspiration, it’s perspiration". It’s like anything - it gets better over time the more effort you put into it. You can structure your approach to branding by creating a Brand Strategy which is what we do for our clients at Jellypepper. So what the hell is a Brand Strategy?

Well, it's essentially the principles and direction behind your brand. It’s all the emotional and psychological traits of your company - what people think of you, what you think of yourself... that sort of thing and using that as a rationale for your visuals. Culture, perception, vision, mission... how do these influence the fonts that we pick, the words we use, the shape of our logo?

There are a bunch of tools we have at our disposal to help with this, here's a couple:

One simple and effective tool is the elevator pitch. Most good startups have one, less so in big companies. They’re a quickfire way of bringing together your team’s messaging and company’s positioning so it’s great for folks to understand what the hell you do.

Here are 4 good elevator pitch examples from very big tech companies - they’re short and sweet. Any idea who they belong to?

We help businesses and organisations communicate with a simple chat interface.

We help individuals get from A to Z with a simple ride-sharing app.

We help people buy and sell things online.

We help individuals stay connected and share experiences online.

If you said Slack, Uber, Amazon and Facebook, you'd be a winner. Easy right? They’re factual, relatively straight to the point and help people understand what you do. Interestingly, they all follow the same pattern: here’s what we do, here’s how we do it. Unfortunately, these aren’t good for developing a long-term brand strategy because they focus on the what and the how... but not the why.

There's a great TED Talk by Simon Sinek that explains that all companies know what they do, only some companies know how they do it and very few know why. The best campaigns and all the best brands start with why — they’re emotive.

Most companies work inwards because it’s easy: here’s what we do, here's why we’re different.

we’re a law firm -> biggest clients, great performance

we sell this car -> leather seats, aircon

we sell Pepsi -> 61% of people prefer us to coke

Factual, but uninspiring. Companies who are brilliant at branding and advertising, such as Apple, start with the why.

“everything we do is about challenging the status quo”

“those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do”

How do we do it? We invest in simplicity, empathy and beauty. These folks sell laptops and phones remember, but if you couple that mindset with a great logo and a well-directed campaign: inspiring. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Let’s see an example of this in action:

Apple’s 1984 Superbowl Ad, comparing the “big brother” concept from George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four to their main competitor, IBM.

Fun fact: Apple’s market research company said this was probably going to be one of their worst ads ever (rating it 5/43). The Ad cost $650k and ended up making them $155M. Why? The riveting story, strong modern cultural references and production values made it one of the most talked about topics in America.

So why even bother with branding? Is it all just to make a sexy website and logo? It’s really difficult for companies to see the ROI of branding and design because it’s not as easily measurable like sales or code, but we tend to think there’s 3 key reasons to invest in a brand:

The first is navigation. Every popular industry is an oligopoly:

Soft Drinks: Pepsi, Coca Cola, Dr Pepper?

How do you decide where to go? Part of it is what you feel like, but the majority is brand loyalty.

The second is reassurance. Once a customer opts to go with you, you want to make them feel like they’ve made the right choice. This is where delightful moments and great experiences come into play. If you choose a brand and they disappoint you with a bad product or customer service, you’re unlikely to go with them again.

The last one is engagement. Once a brand has you, they need to do everything they can to keep you. They use their brand strategy and visual devices to keep that relationship open with you - the same tone of voice, messaging, the logo, the same great experience.

The most common thing I hear from startups is that they can’t afford a good brand right now and that’s a fair enough statement — if you’re pre Series-A, you’re probably concerned with staying alive. The difficulty with branding startups for us (and disruptive startups in particular) is there’s a minimum vector where we’re best suited to help them. Anything before seed, it’s just not financially viable unless you cheap out, but then what’s the point?

So where do you start if you want an amazing brand without dropping a bunch of cash on an agency? The first step is workshopping - figure out what sort of company you want to be and how you want people to perceive you. These things define your brand just as much as a logo. Turn this into a brand strategy. You don’t need an agency for this (though it does help). Figure out your values, mission, culture, market positioning, things like that. Focus on creating a good strategy - it will make the visual part a lot easier later on.

Hopefully you’ve got some idea of branding for startups now. We run workshops like this every so often at Jellypepper with our clients. It’s the foundation of every great branding project we do.

So you know... I’ll send you an invoice.

What makes a great startup brand and why branding disruptive startups can be challenging.

Branding for Disruptive Startups

Choosing the right font for your brand can be a difficult task. It's often something that is overlooked, but it has such an impact on how your business is perceived and how consumers interact with your content. Fonts say so much about what you're trying to convey, they can make or break your entire brand identity. This guide will help you decide which fonts are best for different brands and offer some helpful tips on picking fonts from independent foundries.

Let's start off simple. Fonts are a specific style of letters, numbers, symbols or glyphs that make up words on a page. Fonts can be classified as serif, sans-serif (or sans), script or decorative font types.

Serif fonts have additional strokes at the end of each letter, this is to help the letters in sentences or text flow together. Serifs have been used in print design since the invention of moveable type because they're easier to read at small sizes than sans serif fonts. Serif fonts also look more formal.

Sans-serif fonts literally means "without serifs" and have a more modern feel. Because they don't have any additional strokes, they're the most common font type on the web because of their clean and easy to read style that works well for larger font sizes such as headings or headlines.

Script font types have an elegant flowing style that can be used for formal invitations or announcements.

Decorative fonts may include borders, swirls or other unique design elements that don't fit into more traditional categories of fonts.

These are just a few of the different font types we recommend for your brand. Choosing or designing the perfect typeface is more than picking what's trending, it has everything to do with how you want people to feel when they consume your content and represent who you are as an individual or company.

A typeface is a set of type that includes several fonts. For example, the popular Helvetica is a font but not the only font in that family. There are many other weights and styles of Helvetica to choose from - light, bold, regular etc.

A font is the specific weight or style within the typeface; for instance if you want to set a document in Helvetica, you'd need both the font and then typeface.

Typography is the practice and study of the art and technique for arranging type in order to make language visible.

A glyph is a letter in the alphabet, or an ideograph that may represent either letters and symbols.

Choosing a font for your brand is an important decision, as it conveys the tone of your company. Ideally you want to select fonts that are in line with what your brand stands for and will be able use them across all channels: printing, digital or web design without feeling out-of-place.

When selecting which font to use, think about your brand's personality.

Do you want a traditional font that speaks to tradition?

Or do you want a more modern, sleek and minimalistic look?

Is it appropriate for the message you're trying to communicate?

Can people read it easily without getting distracted by an overly complicated or hard-to-read design?

Try different fonts until one stands out as the perfect fit for your company.

There are many places to find fonts, but not all of them have the same quality. The best place to start is with Google Fonts or Adobe Typekit (which are both free). Google Fonts in particular has a selection of great fonts, such as Inter and Lato.

If you're looking for a paid font, you might want to search font marketplaces such as MyFonts or Font Bureau. They have a wide range of high quality fonts that are well designed and 100% licensed from their original designers.

If you're looking for something really special, you may want to consider browsing an independent font foundry, who work with a small set of designers or their own in-house team to release new fonts on a periodic basis.

Fonts are one part of your brand. You can use them in various places such as headlines, headings and body copy on your website.

You should also consider fonts for cover photos, social media posts etc. This will help create a more cohesive brand experience across all of your marketing channels.

When you're looking for a font to purchase, it's important to know what your budget looks like.

Some typefaces are priced as low as $50 and some can cost up to $1000+. This is due in part that quality of fonts vary drastically from size so if you need the best quality typeface on the market, be prepared.

Another factor in the price is if the typeface is sold as a single weight. Some foundries will sell both regular and italic (or oblique) weights of their fonts, while others offer just one or the other to save on costs for those who need it.

Additionally, fonts have different levels of support for languages. If you're looking for a font to support all of the languages in your product, be prepared to pay more than if it was just English.

When you're downloading a font nowadays, you typically have a few options including Desktop, Web, App, Print, etc. Desktop / Print fonts are designed to be installed on the designer's computer and typically come on OTF or TTF format.

If you're looking for a font to use on your website, then webfonts are the best option. These fonts will be served by the web server and downloaded in various formats like EOT or WOFF so that it displays properly across all browsers. Webfonts are great because they're easily accessible and only need to exist in one place: the server that's serving up your website or app content.

At Jellypepper, we're always looking for brilliant typefaces and we've collected a short list of independent font foundries that we visit every time we start a new project:

A guide on to deciding which fonts to choose and a helpful list of independent foundries.

Choosing the right font for your brand

Asking for personal data is a delicate process and it can be very difficult to know how much information you need. For example, if you are asking for someone’s email address on your product onboarding page, do you ask them to input their email address right then? Or should they add in their email later after they have learned more about the product? What if they don’t want to give out an email at all? This article will help answer these questions by providing tips to create perfect onboarding copy.

Understand your audience's priorities and goals

Understanding your audience, their needs and goals is crucial to providing onboarding that will help them achieve those things. Determine what they are trying to do with your product or service in order for you to tailor copy appropriately. Provide a few options of different actions so they can find something which suits them best.

"Which option appeals more? (a) I want this done quickly; (b) I am up for an adventure."

You can organise the information in bullet points if that's easier. You may also want to make a list of sub-points under each section so it will be easier to edit them later.

For example, you may want to start thinking about questions such as:

Which types of requests are a bad idea at certain stage in that relationship?

What kind of content might work better than other types depending on the level of trust established between them and your company so far?

How does UX play into this balancing act as well, since it allows an opportunity for you to connect with your users on an emotional level.

When should you ask for personal information from users during the onboarding process, and what type of user data would be appropriate to request at different stages in their relationship with your company (low vs. high friction)?

When asking people to input information about themselves during onboarding, it's best to start with low-friction questions, such as:

If the user has given you low-friction information, it's time for some higher friction. Questions that might be considered high-friction would include things like:

After each step, ask yourself if there are any more steps available which could lead them closer to committing their trust. If not, then go ahead and finish onboarding by asking for something they can commit on behalf of themselves - such as payment details.

The way you speak to your users is just as important to your brand as your logo, colours or fonts. Figuring out whether you're witty, casual, excited or serious can have a massive impact on how your users perceive you and whether they're willing to part with their personal information.

It's tempting to use the same "sign up" language in every onboarding email, but it ends up coming off as robotic and impersonal. Experiment with different ways of getting users excited about using your product - you'll be pleasantly surprised by how many people respond well! And don't forget humour: a little lighthearted banter never hurts. It shows that there are real humans behind this experience who care enough make sure they're providing value for their customers.

One of the most common mistakes in creating an onboarding process is asking users too many questions on one screen. Remember, onboarding is about easing your user into the product. Group your questions by level of friction and try to limit yourself to a maximum of five questions per screen.

Your goal should be crafting an onboarding experience that will delight users - not scare them off by bombarding them with questions or overwhelming language. That means taking the time to write out meaningful copy that makes sense in context instead of relying on stock phrases like "Sign up now." Keep it personal! Read back over your content and ask yourself: are we being too sales-y? Are we asking for too much information? Is the copy too complicated? Would a regular user understand what this means?

Be sure to use language that is clear and concise. Be specific about the problem your product solves, but don't forget to offer some general benefits too! Remember: not all users are on the same page when it comes to understanding what they need from your app or service. You want them engaged with your copy - not frustrated. Make room in their onboarding experience for discovery!

In order to make sure that people are onboarding in the right way, use a push strategy for some and a pull strategy for others.

Push copy is about urging your user towards action while making it easy as possible to do so - this might include nudges from emails or popups on their homepage reminding them of the value they'll get if they sign up now. Make sure you're not being too nagging! That's how we lose users.

Pull copy is more personal: ask open-ended questions like what drives them crazy at work? What are their goals long term? This type of copy needs time investment (more than pushing), but it can yield much better results for your product in the long-term. Balance these two strategies to keep your user onboarding for the long-term. Remember, good things take time!

Without a strong UX foundation that allows them to trust you and feel safe with opening up more personal information, they'll never get past those first few screens of setting up an account or signing in - no matter how compelling your copy is on its own. This is why we need usability testing: because if our product's not intuitive enough, even the best copy won't be able to save it.

Think about whether you're pushing too hard or pulling too little: are people onboarded as quickly as possible? Are they adequately engaged before being pushed towards higher friction interactions like filling out their profile? How can you balance the information you need with the experience they're having?

Asking for personal data is a delicate process, so we've compiled some tips on how to best ask users for their personal information.

Tips for writing perfect product onboarding copy

Some concepts and terms used in the creative industry can be difficult to grasp, especially when they’re a little less tangible than a logo. This tends to be the case with the important yet misunderstood role of brand strategy.

To understand what brand strategy is, let’s start with the basics. Brands exist for a very simple reason: to give companies an identity. They help outsiders get a feel of who’s behind a company name - and help insiders align on a core identity.

Building a brand means defining what the company looks like, how it behaves and how it talks. To figure all this out, we strategise.

When we talk about brand strategy, we essentially talk about building the framework on which all creative work relies on. Setting the right parameters means everything that follows is coherent and seamless. If you go straight into visuals and copy without that framework, things can get messy. Brands without a clear strategy can be spotted from miles away. Here’s how:

When a brand doesn’t successfully differentiate nor reflect the ethos of the company

When the designers can’t tell you why they made specific design decisions

When there’s lots of conflicting and inconsistent messaging

When a brand continuously needs to be refreshed or updated

Now let’s dive a little deeper into what the brand strategy process looks like. The first thing we do when creating or refreshing a brand is to listen. We gather all kinds of perspectives so we can get the whole picture. We talk to people within the company, but also with customers. We look into what competitors do, how the industry is evolving and what the overall context is. Once we’re swimming in information and knowledge, that’s when we start to simplify and define what the brand should be about. To do so, we ask ourselves questions like:

What's the company's overall vision and ambition?

What personality traits reflect the company's culture? Should we create a brand that's fun, serious, mysterious, caring, daring?

What audiences is the brand trying to reach?

How can we simply explain what the company does?

How should we structure and present the entire offering to the outside world in the clearest possible way?

What are the reasons to believe everything we claim is true?

Clarifying the above is critical for designers and copywriters to work their magic as it gives them a structure in which to be creative.

Beyond the creative process, a well-defined brand strategy can help with business decisions and team alignment as it provides a clear and unifying direction for the company.

To summarise, this thorough process aims to build brands that last by accurately reflecting what the company is about and where it’s going. Brand strategists don’t tend to come up with anything new but rather uncover truths that are buried in a sea of information, thoughts and opinions - and package them in a clear, sensible and compelling way.

Brand strategy can feel like an intangible and unclear concept. Here’s a brief overview of what it is and why it’s crucial to the creative process.

Brand Strategy: that thing you didn’t know you needed

At the end of every branding project, we deliver a brand book that consolidates everything we created - from the visuals and copy to the strategic thinking behind them. Find out why brand books are important, what's in them and what principles guide us at Jellypepper.

If a brand was an object, it'd be a brand book. In a nutshell, brand books package all the branding work into a beautiful, simple and helpful document. What's in there forms the foundation for every communication, on any touchpoint. Brand books make sure everyone is on the same page and enable coherence across everything a brand does or says. So they're pretty crucial.

The content varies from one brand to another but we typically structure them into three main categories:

We start by giving an overview of the company, why it exists, what makes it unique, what are its fundamental values and principles, etc.

This is where we show the design system and how to use it - including elements such as the logo, typography, colour palette, imagery, illustration, patterns, etc.

This part consists of providing guidelines on the brand personality and tone of voice. This is also where we start drafting examples of messaging.

The team at Jellypepper has crafted a distinct methodology to making brand books. We are essentially driven by four key principles:

Brand books don't need to be extremely lengthy. Ours go straight to the point as we believe too much information can be overwhelming, leading to a misunderstanding of the guidance and messages we're trying to get across.

The brand book is the biggest opportunity to show how the brand works in practice in terms of design and copywriting. That's why we pay attention to every detail so the document itself becomes a best practice use of the brand that any designer or copywriter can refer to.

The simpler, the better. We keep everything as simple and straightforward as possible. No need for fancy terms that no one would understand. The objective of a brand book is to consolidate and simplify, not to make things more complex.

At Jellypepper, we view brand books as more than just a series of guidelines. Its contents should be an accurate reflection of what the company is about. Brand books are an opportunity to tell the story of the brand and give a glimpse into its verbal and visual world. When flipping through the pages, it should feel as if we were entering the company's offices and meeting the team.

Because brand books are the ultimate deliverables when creating or refreshing a brand, we make sure they are carefully thought-through. A typical brand book developed by Jellypepper is a short, jargon-free, immersive document that acts as a best practice example on how to design and write.

Wondering how we create brand books? Get a glimpse into our approach and process when we develop these crucial guides.

Stories, updates and ideas on Branding

Branding for Disruptive Startups

Choosing the right font for your brand

Tips for writing perfect product onboarding copy

Brand Strategy: that thing you didn’t know you needed

How to make an effective brand book for clients